How to start a bait shop

A good bait and tackle shop can make about $45,000 per year, if it’s small. Larger franchised bait and tackle shops, meanwhile, can make over $200,000 in profit per year. A lot of a bait and tackle shop’s success depends on its availability—as well as the area’s fishing needs.

Costs to Start a Bait Shop

A small shop that stocks bait and a few fishing supplies cost about $5,000 to start. A larger shop with a greater selection of bait and inventory can cost $25,000 or more. Common startup costs for a bait shop include: Initial inventory including live bait and fishing gear.

Whether you‘re selling bait you caught on your own with a tiny string tied to a stick or have a full-scale, multi-person bait fishing operation, you need a dealer’s license. This license to sell fish is required of even the tiniest bait stand because it helps manage natural resources and local fish populations.

Shiners can be raised in your own home and at low costs. Fill a holding tank with water. The size of the tank can be from 2 to 4 feet deep and 6 to 8 feet wide. If possible, use well water to fill the tank because well water has fewer chemicals and biological contaminants than other water sources.

In states and waterways where it is illegal, you can catch catfish, crappie, yellow perch, largemouth bass, striped bass, walleye, and pike using shiners as bait. Walleye, catfish, bullheads, pike, chain pickerel, bass, striped bass, yellow perch, crappie, and trout will readily eat shiners if they are present.

The eggs develop for a period of 4 to 7 days before hatching. Females can lay up to 200,000 eggs. Golden shiners are repeat spawners and may spawn 4 to 5 times per season. Young golden shiners will mate in the year after they hatch if they are in warmer waters.

A pound of golden shiners may produce over one-half million eggs in a season. Golden shiners are broadcast spawners; they lay adhesive eggs on submersed vegetation, or in culture ponds, on mats of latex-coated coconut fiber. The small eggs (~1-mm diameter) hatch in three to five days, depending on water temperature.

Shiners will forage in open waters of the pond, cropping off insect larvae, zooplankton, some filamentous algae and occasionally other fish larvae. They have been known to be predatory, limited only by their small mouth size. When stocking, buy shiners which are 2-3 years old or 4-6″ in length.

In their conquered territory, shiners are considered a serious threat to native species because they displace and outcompete them, prey on their young, introduce tapeworms and other parasites, and dilute gene pools through hybridization.

Shiners thrive in weedy ponds and feed well on supplemental fish feed from an automatic fish feeder.

When to stock your pond

You want the bluegills, redear sunfish, and minnows to have time to reproduce and establish the forage base for your pond. You can then introduce predator species – bass, walleye, catfish – after the spring spawn of the forage fish.